Confessions on a track

miércoles, 30 de abril de 2014

As an athlete, undergraduate sports student and
assistant coach, I’ve been able to see this profession from different
perspectives.

First, it’s not as easy as it looks. There’s a big
misunderstanding in our society about this profession; many people think that the
only requirements to be a coach are the following ones:

-Jacket, sweatpants and sport shoes

-Cap and sunglasses (optional, if you
want to look a little bit more scary)

-Whistle, chronometer and clipboard
(must have or you’re going to look like unskilled)

-You better get used to chew gum and
spit thick

-Be bossy and as far as possible shout louder than lion!

-Remind to your pupils how weak they
are

-Impress everyone with difficult drills

That’s the typical stereotype of coach that has
prevailed through all the times. And to be honest, most of the coaches fit that
profile.

It’s really dangerous, because if being a coach is
about looking like one, then anyone could be it. In that vein, I could wear a
medical gown, some glasses, take a scalpel and say: “I’m a neurosurgeon, whom
do I make the first incision in the head?”

Trust me, it’s that serious!

A neurosurgeon intervenes one patient at a time, a
coach intervenes over 20, 30 or even 50 persons at a time in all the aspects:
physical, psychological, emotional, social… as a coach you are modifying
someone’s life.

So, being a coach it’s not looking like one, it’s acting
consciously based on the effect that your activities and your behavior are
causing to the people under your command. It’s being the right guide for them
to raise their potential.

It’s also to be open to change the road and accept
advices when is necessary, because as you will realize, no one has the last
word, experts are also wrong and you teach what you need to learn.

So, don't brag after a win, ego is too heavy to carry it on. Surrender your ego and be free.

viernes, 4 de abril de 2014

We can’t help to look at elite athletes as gods. We are always overwhelmed
for what they do. We wonder how far they can go and what it takes to get there.
We live fascinated with their skills.

But elite sport, has another face that, like it or
not, you are going to see in any moment.

First, nature does its own selection by genetic. Most
of elite athletes have any particular biological characteristic that makes them
adequate for their sport. Great height, long legs, exorbitant oxygen
consumption, conveniently distributed muscle fibers and so on…

Those who are lucky enough to have any of those
mutations, are the ones that we usually see on TV doing these incredible
performances. Those are the gifted ones!

The problem lies in those who want to become elite
athletes and they don’t have any outstanding biological advantage. My coach
once told me: “you find two types of athletes. The gifted ones and the ones who
must work harder to barely get to the level of the gifted ones”. He’s totally
right!

To be honest, most of the athletes you see are pure
hard-workers, they’re kind of stubborn with the idea of becoming one day the
next world or Olympic champion. Others (much more realistic) conform to making
state or national teams.

They spend long hours of training, energy, they make
lots of sacrifices in their personal lives, they mortgage their health (because
elite training is not healthy) and do anything for that dream. They may get some
good results (if we consider that wise statement: “hard work beats talent when
talent doesn’t work hard”) but when they have to face a gifted athlete who has
worked as hard as them (or even harder), they finally understand the
difference.

It’s kind of unfair, because at the end of the day
you’re nobody if you don’t have any relevant victory. As Bill Gates said in one
of his life rules: “the world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will
expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself”. People
won’t care how hard you train, they just expect you to do something remarkable.
The truth is that the ones who get the front pages of the newspapers are the
gold medalists.

So far I’ve talked about how unfair is elite sport for
the non-gifted. Now let’s see how hard it is for the gifted ones.

It’s just summarized in one single word: interest.

Governments, Federations, Leagues, clubs… don’t care
about the health of the elite athletes or their future, they only use their victories
to flaunt about their politics, system or administration. And if you, as elite
athlete, don’t obtain a remarkable result, you better find something else to
make a living.

Doping is an open secret in elite sport.

In the context of the cold war, where USSR and USA had
their fighting, sport was a perfect stage to prove who was better. The athletes
were more like lab rats and as the drug testing was limited, there was an open
field for creating performance enhancing drugs that won’t be discovered.

East Germany government developed the most
sophisticated doping program on earth. A system that made this country with about
16 million of habitants become a world leader in sports at the 70’s and 80’s. Men
and women were given Oral Turinabol, a strong anabolic steroid that made them
true machines. Women were seriously masculinized (just look at Heidi Krieger
case). At that time, Marita Koch broke the 400m world record by a huge margin
that won’t ever be touched by a clean athlete just as the androgen Jarmilla
Kratochvilová at the 800m.

Americans had to step it up a notch too. Flo Jo case
make you lift your eyebrows. With 28 years she went from a discreet mark to a
stratospheric 100m world record in just some few months (don't tell me that after breaking a WR in 100m by such a margin you end up smiling, hugging and waving). After that, when the
surprise drug tests begin in 1989, she immediately retired. Bob Kersee is a genious!

Another case to consider is Carl Lewis. We all know
the story of the 1988 Olympics when Ben Johnson beat him but it was found that
Johnson was doped so Carl Lewis was the “real” winner. What most of the people
ignore is that in April 2003 Sports Illustrated published USOC official
documents that prove that Lewis and other 11 American athletes tested positive
by ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and phenilpropalamine but they argued that they
did it with no intention. So case was dismissed. Today, Carl Lewis is still a
respected retired athlete, he keeps going to all kinds of events as a great
personality and American media seems to ignore what he did.

Not to mention recent cases like Lance Armstrong, Marion
Jones, Tim Montgomery, Asafa Powell, Tyson Gay, Veronica Campbell Brown and
long list of recognized elite athletes that have been discovered.

Elite sport is a dirty business and we are being
constantly cheated by these gods of sport. It's humanly impossible to get to certain levels without the use of performance enhancing drugs and it seems that those who are smart enought to cover it, are the ones who succeed.

martes, 18 de febrero de 2014

We all live inside of a comfort zone. We know it very
well: its shape, its width, its edges… We feel safe inside of it. It’s that
place you trust in.

But sometimes we go out of that zone. Maybe because we
decided to do it or because we were pushed out of there. And so we face the battle field: that
situation we’ve got to struggle with. That issue that make us feel scared.

After that, we comeback immediately to our comfort zone
because we've got scared with everything we saw there. But now we’re familiarized
with it. So maybe we will dare to do it again.

The truth is that, as the time goes by, we get so
bored in that comfort zone that we are willing to go out and deal with it. When
we finally win the battle, we make of that place another comfort zone (much
bigger, of course), because now we own it.

And we repeat that cycle over and over again through
our lives.

The problem lies in those who don’t have the slightest
intention of going out of their comfort zones. They need someone or something
to push them out of there. If not well, they’ll get stocked in there for the
rest of their lives. They won’t go anywhere. They won’t know who they are.

Track and Field has shown me that.

As a runner you have to be going in and out of your
conform zone. You must go out of your well-being state to face fatigue, pain,
rivalry and sometimes disappointment. But once you’ve gone through all of that,
you get to another comfort zone in which you’re stronger, endurable and you’re
able to do things that before you couldn’t even think that you were capable of.

Competitions are those perfect opportunities to advance
to higher and bigger comfort zone. You don’t only have to beat others, you
have to struggle against the time, space, fatigue, fear…

Yes, the fear. We all feel it and it’s a good sign
because it means we are leaving the comfort behind and we are about to face the
battle.

Life is about constant flux, change and battle. You
better get used to go out of your comfort zone!

sábado, 18 de enero de 2014

Running isn’t just about taking a long ride showing
your expensive last season sneakers, boasting about your personal best, making
state or national teams, getting a scholarship and winning any medal. There’s
more to this than meets the eye.

Running is what helps you to discover who you really
are.

How we run, it’s exactly how we are. There’re many
things in our personal lives that we don’t handle as it should be, so we just
decide to ignore them or even worst, to hide them. But, the river has to run:
somehow you have to let it go, consciously or unconsciously.

It’s there where running appears as that catharsis
technique that you need to take that out of you.

So when you, your coach or the people around you
identify any problem with the way you run, don’t blame the shoes, don’t blame
the track, don’t blame the size of your shorts…Go and look what is wrong in
your daily life!

Try to find what is making you raise your jaw when you
shouldn’t, what is it that makes your neck to be tensioned, why your steps are
shorter or longer, why you’ve got a hump while you run, what keeps your mind so
busy that you can’t react on time, why it’s so difficult to get ahead of the
race, why you hold your pace to avoid fatigue, why you look so forced?

You don’t need to have vast knowledge in Psychology to
know what your mind is expressing through your body language. And what a better
way to do it than running!

When you decide to look at running as a liberating
experience, you start to see things that you didn’t ever imagine to have. And when you finally start to see yourself,
you can see others. You start to understand all the different kinds of
personalities: the ones who wait until the end to attack, the ones that start
so fast that they can’t even finish, the ones who hide among the others, the
ones who grind down the others, the ones who make themselves unattainable, the
ones who would rather retire than being last, the ones who don’t have any idea
of what they’re doing…

Don’t be shy to be naked. We all need it to know who
we are. WE’RE ALL NAKED ON THE TRACK!